Best Bird of the Weekend (Last of August 2010)

The bad news is that summer is almost over. On the other hand, birding is getting interesting again in many parts of the world, including mine. How about yours? Please share the fascinating details of your best bird of the weekend…

I have a few standouts to choose from but fall in favor of the ominous kettle of Turkey Vultures wheeling over my gym on Sunday; people must be working out pretty hard in order to generate thermals, right? Corey’s best bird of the weekend was any of the three shearwater species he spotted on the CRESLI pelagic trip (finally!), though the Thick-billed Parrots at the Queens Zoo (part of a captive-breeding program) were, in his words, pretty darn cool too.

What was your best bird of the weekend? Tell us in the comments section about the rarest, loveliest, or most fascinating bird you observed. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, you should include a link in your comment.

Mike is a leading authority in the field of standardized test preparation, but he's also a traveler who fully expects to see every bird in the world. Besides founding 10,000 Birds, Mike has also created a number of other entertaining but now extirpated nature blog resources, particularly the Nature Blog Network and I and the Bird.

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Visiting my relatives 200 k’s south of Heidelberg again. Completely rained out and barely any birds seen at all, but a flock of 24 migrating Black Kites were “pretty darn cool”, easily the largest flock of the species I have ever seen in Germany, almost reminiscent of Mid East raptor migration.

And Mike, are you sure they were looking for thermals over the gym and not heart-attacks?

This weekend the schedule was too tight for formal birding; all of my spots recently have come while jogging.

So at first it wasn’t going to be a weekend bird … last Thursday, was lucky enough to witness a pair of Great Egrets swooping in over a lake (and a trio of oblivious perching Green Herons) to their nests in the trees. Some girls sitting on a park bench noticed them too and said “Wow!” It’s cool when non-birders get caught up the action.

But then, yesterday, heard (and then saw) one of the local Red-tailed Hawks perched atop the spire of the Episcopal church. *Then* (yes, it gets better!) further along my meandering running route, half a mile away, I saw presumably the same hawk on a utility pole, being squawked at and badgered by what looked like a Northern Mockingbird. (It was one of the poles with arms … both birds weren’t sharing the top!) The hawk sat there impassively for about a minute, then chased the mockingbird away.

We finished our Quadricentennial Paddle of Lake Champlain this weekend. And so I saw: a loon, a belted kingfisher, an osprey, lots and lots of mallards,and a giant flock of double-crested cormorants. All in all it was a lovely weekend on many levels